


a foreign country

by blanketed_in_stars



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 19:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14315826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: Steve walks from 1941 right into 2016, and finds a Bucky who is only just beginning to piece together the past.





	a foreign country

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themirrordarkly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themirrordarkly/gifts).



> "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." —L. P. Hartley
> 
> This is a gift for [starmaki,](http://starmaki.tumblr.com) who very kindly donated to the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction! Unfortunately this took much longer than it should have - so, over five months later, here is the fic! Sue, thank you so much for the inspiration and support through the writing process; I wish I could've fit everything into the story, but I think I got the important ones ;)
> 
> Thanks also to [Audrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palebluedot) (as always) for the feedback and for being a shoulder to cry/complain on, and for never, ever giving up!
> 
> The (very small) colcannon mention is inspired by ["Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1962816) which will always be one of my favorite fics of all time.
> 
> And finally, for anyone interested in listening to the soundtrack I've envisioned for this fic, [the playlist is here!](https://open.spotify.com/user/tardis-demon-detective/playlist/54xTT5TuJAzLZ1GiRpe6aH)

The thing is still ticking, and it’s practically red-hot; Steve flings it from himself before he’s even found his balance again. It skitters against the wall and spins out across the floor. He stumbles for another moment and then connects with something—a chair, no, a little table—and braces himself against it.

As his pulse quiets, the ticking seems to grow louder. From the other side of the wall comes a thudding noise of something heavy moving, and Steve backs away, reaching instinctively for something, he doesn’t know what, adrenaline thrumming in his fingertips.

The door on the right side of the wall bangs open just as Steve finds his way blocked by a rickety chair. Into the room steps a giant of a man with long, dark hair and— _“Bucky?”_

Bucky—it is him, Steve confirms, taking in the familiar cut of his jaw and the slope of his shoulders—stops as if he’s run into some invisible wall. He peers at Steve, their faces mirroring confusion, with a squint and a quizzical frown on his lips. Then he shakes his head as if to clear it. “Fuck,” he says under his breath.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve tries, knowing how it must look, his heart still pounding. His breath sears his throat.

At the sound of his voice, Bucky startles visibly. “Fuck,” he repeats, more fervently, and sags against the wall. But he rallies quickly, gripping the door frame with fingers white at the knuckles as he straightens up. “You,” he says, with iron certainty, “you’re Steve.”

Steve half-grins, spreading his arms. “Sure am.” He wishes Tony had been a little bit more specific about his machine, which is still making regular ticks from the corner. Or at least included an instruction manual when he pressed the thing into Steve’s hands. How the hell is he supposed to explain this, he wonders, when he himself would be absolutely convinced he was feverish or had eaten bad eggs? “I, uh, I know this looks—well—”

But Bucky is already moving, stalking forward and past Steve with his eyes fixed determinedly on something to Steve’s left. Steve trails off as he goes by, turning to watch him seize what looks to be a faded pair of pants from a shelf before turning on his heel and heading back through the same door, which he shuts firmly behind him.

“Howard, you fucker,” Steve sighs, following in Bucky’s footsteps and banging on the door. “Bucky, I can explain,” he calls through. “It’s—it was Howard Stark, I don’t—I don’t know if you know him—” He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to just say it; he grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut. “He sent me here from nineteen forty-one, because he’s a reckless idiot, but—” Steve stops, listening. There is no sound at all. “Are you listening? Buck?”

A moment longer, then—the sound of running water. Steve realizes this must be a bathroom door he’s pounding on. “Bucky,” he says over the noise. “C’mon, just hear me out, would you?” The only reply is sloshing, like the water is moving around. Steve rolls his eyes. “Great time to take a bath, pal.”

But he turns away from the door, recognizing that trying to force Bucky to pay attention is pointless. For the first time, confronted with the empty room, Steve realizes what he’s looking at: an apartment not unlike their own tiny one in Brooklyn. Only they didn’t sleep on a mattress on the floor. Frowning, Steve walks forward and picks up one of the crumpled newspapers sitting on the corner of the makeshift bed.

It’s all in some language he doesn’t recognize, something maybe like Spanish, but in any case he can’t read it. He seizes on the date in the corner: 25.1.2016. And although Steve knew, technically, that Howard was sending him to the future, it makes his stomach roil uneasily to see the proof before his eyes. _Seventy-five years,_ he thinks distantly. How is Bucky even alive—? And he doesn’t look a day older than he did at twenty-nine, the last time Steve saw him—or, who knows, maybe that doesn’t count given the three-quarters’ century that’s passed since then—

He sits down heavily on the mattress.

It practically crumples underneath him, dismally lumpy and worn. Steve surfaces from his jumbled thoughts enough to wrinkle his nose at it, then, seized by an idea, gets up and grabs the still-ticking machine. Turning it over, he discerns the Stark logo and belatedly locates a little screen with numbers scrolling by. 71:43:24, 71:43:23, 71:43:22... Just under three days. Trying not to think about what that means, Steve shoves it as far under the mattress as he can reach, which muffles it significantly.

Attempting to focus on something, anything, other than the utter absurdity of the situation, Steve stares around the apartment—at the walls, which are soot-stained, the floorboards, peeling up and full of splinters, the windows, grimy, half-papered-over. His gaze settles on the shelves from which Bucky pulled his pants before, realizes they’re not so much shelves as a few planks of wood resting on cinder blocks. And the clothes there all have the same grayish tinge as the rest, like it’s something in the air.

Abruptly, the bathroom door opens, and there stands Bucky again. His eyes go right to Steve and lock there.

“Hey,” Steve says into the silence, and notices for the first time—Bucky is wearing a sleeveless shirt now—the silvery covering, some kind of armor, on Bucky’s left arm. He stares for a moment, then tears his eyes away.

“You’re still here,” Bucky says, staring back. He swallows hard. “I thought you were just—I thought I—” He shakes his head again. “How are you here? And—like this?”

“Howard Stark got it into his head to make a time machine,” Steve recites, “and he gave it to me and it started ticking and I tried to drop it, but I wound up here. Uh, wherever here is.”

“Romania,” Bucky rasps, it seems automatically. He licks his lips and his gaze darts from Steve to the newspaper to the door and back again. “Bucharest.” He pronounces the word as if he’s known it for years, București, a foreign sound to Steve that rolls off Bucky’s lips like cigarette smoke when he’d stand on the fire escape and Steve would knock on the window to let him know that dinner was ready.

It’s not a helpful train of thought. Steve focuses on the answer. “Why Romania?”

Stiffly, Bucky shrugs. “Seemed out of the way. They’d find me in Russia, Ukraine—almost did a few times.” The sentences wobble unevenly, tripping along at a strange gait.

“Who’s looking for you?”

Bucky’s lips twist. “Lots of folks.” He scrubs his hand over his face and shifts where he’s standing, still half-frozen in the doorway. “Are you, uh, how long are you gonna be here?”

“You got a hot date?” Steve shoots back, knee-jerk, though it falls flat because there was no rapport to begin with. He can’t wrap his mind around how Bucky is looking at him: only from the edges, sidelong, spooked. Not scared or mistrustful so much as disbelieving. And the way he holds himself, God, like he’s ready to run. Steve’s confusion becomes tempered with concern. “What happened to you, Buck?”

“I’m trying to figure that out,” Bucky replies.

“On your own, in a hole like this?”

For the first time, a flicker of something other than shock passes over Bucky’s face. Steve recognizes it instantly from a million evenings over bloodied knuckles. Irritation, deep and exasperated. “It’s mine,” Bucky says. There’s a hint of pride there, too.

———

Bucky is tight-lipped and jumps at every sound, and pulls the little time machine out from under the mattress roughly like it might explode. After he shoves it back, though, grimacing at the high pitch, he stumps around the apartment like a caged animal until he finally starts pulling things out of the cupboards and doing a lot of things with his back turned.

It takes a few minutes before Steve realizes he’s cooking. A few minutes after that, he sidles up to the counter and starts chopping the onions while Bucky’s still working on the potatoes, and Bucky freezes. “What?” Steve asks, noting the tightly-drawn tension all down Bucky’s frame.

But all Bucky says is, “You know the recipe?”

“Of course,” Steve snorts, “I taught it to you, didn’t I?” Bucky is silent. “My ma’s colcannon?”

Slowly, stiffly, Bucky relaxes his death grip on the potato peeler. Sets it in motion again. Steve watches the color come back into his fingernails. “With pork in it, sometimes, right?”

“Right,” Steve says, transfixed by the deftness of the metal fingers turning the potato. Call him crazy, but it doesn’t move like armor. Even if this is the future. “Bucky,” he says, ignoring how he startles at the name, “what happened to your arm?”

“Not sure,” Bucky replies. “I think I lost it in an accident.”

“You _think—?”_

“I don’t remember exactly,” Bucky says, and when Steve glances up he’s frowning. “It was snowing. Real cold.”

Steve waits, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else. “What, and you woke up with a metal one?”

The gaze Bucky turns on him is wide and blue. “Believe it or not, I’ve woken up to worse.”

They eat the colcannon hot and it’s good, and Steve eyes Bucky between bites, waiting for him to say something. He never does. Steve’s pretty sure Bucky’s watching him, too, his gaze sliding away every time Steve looks at him.

———

“How long are you stayin’?” Bucky asks again by the wavering light of the lamp as he’s drying his hands on a towel embroidered with a pattern of smiling little flowers.

“Three days, I guess,” Steve tells him, wishing for the millionth time he had something more to go on than the words of Howard Stark, who at this point is—the hair raises on his arms again—more than likely dead. “Bit less, now. Says so on the machine.”

“You should keep track of how much time is left on that thing,” Bucky says, jerking his chin over at the mattress, which masks the noise of the ticking at this distance. The countdown was so high, Steve thinks, that the request doesn’t make much sense; in any case, Bucky doesn’t seem to care that neither of them has moved. He chews on his lip for a moment longer. “Would you stop looking at me like that,” he half-whispers to the empty space over Steve’s shoulder.

“Like what?”

“Like _that,”_ Bucky says emphatically, metal hand slicing the air. “Hell. Thought it would be easier,” he mumbles, turning away, reaching for something on top of the refrigerator. “You two are just the fuckin’ same, you know that?”

“Who?” Steve demands, following him around the table. “What did you think would be easier?”

“Getting my head right.” Bucky wheels on him, pointing at him with the object he took from the fridge, which Steve sees is a little notebook all dog-eared and marked with scraps of paper. “It was confusing enough before, outrunning ‘em all, and just when I get somewhere—I mean, Christ, you just won’t quit, will you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steve says, stung and getting his hackles up even as he tries not to. “I just jumped seventy-five years in the future, you idiot, it’s not like I knew what I was walking into—”

“Then you shouldn’t’ve done it,” Bucky snarls at him.

The change in his expression is alarming enough that Steve shuts up. He’s seen Bucky angry, annoyed like two hours ago, scared, in pain, once even so happy he’d cried. But he’s never seen his face like this, gutted and tortured and dead around the eyes, like he’s seen something more awful than anything Steve will ever know. Like he’s still seeing it.

The next instant, Bucky’s face shuts down. He throws himself down onto the mattress, a taut coil of energy hunched against the wall as he pulls out a pen and starts scribbling in the notebook. Every few seconds he glances at Steve, wary again.

Cautious in response, Steve lowers himself into the chair he ate in and closes his eyes. His body aches from being squeezed through time, he feels drained, with bones of lead and a pounding skull. The scratching of Bucky’s pen is rhythmic and nothing new. He can almost imagine he’s back home in another century and country, Bucky writing a letter or drawing up the month’s books, can half-convince himself that the cat yowling outside is the one they leave milk out for.

He wakes not because of any noise, but because he can feel a gaze on him. He opens his eyes to find Bucky sitting at the edge of the mattress, forearms balanced on his knees. The world beyond the windows has vanished. “Yeah?” he croaks.

“You can’t sleep in that chair,” Bucky falters. “It’ll make you sore. I don’t really—I guess you could take a blanket if you want, but—”

“I don’t mind,” Steve mumbles, still fogged-over from sleep. He gets up painfully from the chair, takes three steps, and lands heavily on the mattress beside Bucky. “‘S big enough for two.” As if that’s ever stopped them before.

He’s so tired, he nearly falls asleep again in the eternity that passes before Bucky speaks. “Don’t sleep with your neck like that.” And then he’s up and walking across the floor, so abruptly that Steve thinks he might have imagined the words.

Steve lies very still, the air of the apartment cool but not cold, his body all but melting from the exhaustion that’s hitting him all at once. The fabric pressing into his face smells like nothing in particular, maybe a hint of smoke. He can hear the ticking of the time machine directly under his left kneecap. The lights through his eyelids go dark as Bucky pulls the chain to turn out the lamp. He counts four footsteps, then: the mattress shifts, a weight sinks, and a blanket settles over both of them. A long, slow release of breath that ruffles his hair.

———

“Bucky,” Steve whispers at some undetermined hour, everything still black, traced by the barest outlines. He can feel Bucky’s weight beside him.

He doesn’t know why he’s not surprised when Bucky answers right away, why he’s not sleeping. Steve rarely sleeps a night through, an unfortunate consequence of faulty lungs and a tendency to get cold, but Bucky is usually out like a light. This time, though, he moves slightly, dragging a little at the blanket. “Hmm?”

“The year,” Steve says. To his half-alert mind, this is the most important thing. “It’s two thousand and sixteen. Why aren’t you old?”

Bucky is silent.

“Because you should be, I don’t know, a hundred or something,” Steve whispers. “But you look pretty much like you did when you shipped out.”

“When I shipped out,” Bucky repeats. There’s a curious roughness to his voice, but it might just be the hour. “When I... You mean to Europe?”

“Yeah. You don’t look a day over thirty. You sure you didn’t hop in a time machine, too? That was your favorite book, you know, Wells, you musta read it five times at least.”

It’s as if Bucky doesn’t even hear him. “That’d explain a lot,” he murmurs, “but I’m pretty sure I lived it.”

“With me?” Steve asks. He didn’t have the courage for the question before, but this conversation hardly seems real, like it might blow away. “Buck? Was I there?”

In the utter silence—the noises from the city are dim and far-away; between them the air has vanished—Bucky appears to be keeping as still as possible. He swallows, and it makes an audible _snick._ “You’re always there,” he breathes. “Even when I’m not lookin’ for you.”

“Good,” Steve says. His hands fetch up against Bucky’s, and they both draw back a little. It’s the closest they’ve been since Steve arrived here, and he aches, as always, for more—but he’s no idiot, he knows that the future is a foreign country, stranger even than the past: things are different here. He’s not sure if this Bucky is the one he left, if they mean the same things to each other that they used to. He’s afraid to find out. But he can’t stop himself, as the darkness seems to envelop them again and sleep reaches up to hold him tight, from curling just a little closer.

———

He wakes up with a sore neck, blinded from the sun hitting him full in the face from the window. Panic seizes him before he’s fully awake, and he claws his way upright before realizing that it’s because Bucky is no longer beside him. Steve opens his eyes—and there he is, frozen with a mug halfway to his mouth, looking as if he’s worried Steve’s lost his mind. Then, in the first show of tact, or maybe embarrassment, that Steve’s seen from him, he takes a sip and turns away.

Steve forces a deep breath in and out. “What time is it?”

“Eleven o’clock,” Bucky says. He’s already dressed in clothes just as threadbare as what he wore yesterday. “There’s food in the refrigerator. Don’t drink from the tap—water’s in the cupboard if you want it.” As he talks, he sets his mug down and starts rooting around in a knapsack. He methodically pulls out a wad of colorful bills, an empty canvas bag, and something metal and dark that Steve doesn’t get a good look at but which gives him an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, then puts everything back in. He does it all with both hands, using the metal arm as easily as the flesh one. Just another thing he doesn’t understand.

“Are you going somewhere?” Steve asks, because it’s the easiest thing to ask.

Bucky grunts in the affirmative. “I’ll be back before dark.” He drains the mug and drops it in the sink, then swings the knapsack onto his back. He’s got a hand on the doorknob when he stops. “Hey,” he says, turning back around. “Don’t leave the apartment, all right?”

Steve hadn’t been planning on it—hadn’t thought that far ahead, to tell the truth—but the request makes him suspicious. “Why not?”

There’s a moment in which Bucky doesn’t respond, but rather glances to the window, which is something of an answer in itself. “It’s supposed to be just me in here,” he says. “The landlady keeps a pretty close watch. If she sees you, she’ll spike up the rent. Or kick me out.”

 _Why not, really?_ Steve wants to ask, but doesn’t. He figures he can wait and see. “Sure, Buck,” he says. “I don’t wanna make trouble.”

After the door shuts, Steve finds the food that Bucky mentioned. Unfamiliar breakfast cereal in a colorful box. It feels strange to sit at the table and wash his dishes afterwards, absurdly normal, like the dinner last night.

Even stranger is the shower he takes after eating—but this time it’s because he’s never seen a bathroom like this before; that is, gutted. It reinforces his conviction that this place is run-down and dirty. Which it is, despite the way Bucky seems to think otherwise. The tiles are clean enough, but there are holes in the caulking and the bulb is bare and flickering. It reminds him of the turn-of-the-century water closet in the apartment where he lived with his ma. At least here, though, the water is hot.

To save himself from the feeling, be it boredom or panic, that’s ticking ever-closer, Steve comes up with the bright idea of cleaning the apartment, thinking it might go a little way towards changing the way Bucky treats him. But it turns out that the general dilapidation has been concealing what is actually a very tidy set of rooms. Steve putters around for a while, trying to fix little things, but there’s practically nothing to do. Everything is already tucked away.

He notices it when he decides to at least clean Bucky’s mug around mid-afternoon. The counter is spotless, aside from the years-old stains and scratches and a ring of rust around the bottom of the sink. In his search for something to scrub it away with, he comes across a paper bag holding what turns out to be several passports. Two of them are in languages with unfamiliar scripts, one is German, one Italian, and one American. All of them have different names, dates of birth, and addresses, and all of them have a picture of Bucky.

Steve holds them for a moment before he realizes what he’s looking at. He drops the passports back in the bag and shoves it back into the cupboard, shuts the door like it’s evidence of a horrible crime. Which it probably is, he thinks, and reaches on a hunch up to the top of the refrigerator. His fingers find the little notebook, and he pulls it down.

The black cover is worn, the cardboard peeking through. The book falls open easily to a well-thumbed page, upon which is taped—a picture of Steve himself. He recognizes it as having been taken a few years ago. On the facing side is a paragraph and a half of scribbled-out writing. He flips a few pages and finds another picture, this one just a few weeks old, from his time at Lehigh. Beneath it is written one word: _Steve._

It appears that the pictures are an exception, though. Most of the notes Steve finds are disjointed stories, some of which Steve remembers himself, a night at the movies, the storm in ’38. _Got drunk and broke a window?_ is underlined four times. Others are more strange, names and places and descriptions that mean nothing to him.

He reaches the last filled page of the book, about two-thirds through.

_Old safe house demolished, no trace of handlers. Weapons stash intact. Locals not suspicious._

_Rattling heater. Like lungs. Makes me nervous. Memory or conditioning?_

_Colcannon—recipe from Steve? His mother?_  
_-with pork_

A thread pulls in Steve’s brain. He told Bucky about the colcannon, and they argued, and here it is written down as if the fact of the recipe is noteworthy. The question marks make him suspicious. And he doesn’t understand the talk about the safe house at all. He flips back through the notebook with a more critical eye.

Sandwiched between the seemingly-random anecdotes are coordinates, numbers, routes. They start in, of all places, Washington, D.C., and from there the path meanders across Brazil, Egypt, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia. There are a lot of things written in Russian, too, Steve realizes upon closer inspection of what he’d taken at first to be nonsense. For each location there are two things that stay constant: numbered addresses, at least three but often more; and a list of names accompanied by years, all between 1952 and 2010.

The trail swerves into Turkey, then Hungary, and ends in Romania, at what Steve figures is their current address. There are no names or years in those last three stops. Steve gazes down at what he assumes is Bucky’s current address and forms the thought that screams at him from the pages in Bucky’s haphazard hand. _Nobody knows I am here._ He’s running.

The revelation is so startling that Steve actually drops the notebook. He bends to pick it up and blinks at the sight of another photograph of himself, this time completely unrecognizable. It’s his face, all right, but he’s bigger—his shoulders fill up the frame, and his uniform, in a way they never have. He stares at it before he realizes that this must be the result of Dr. Erskine’s serum.

So it worked. So he’s not going to die the day after he makes it back to the past. Steve breathes out slow and leans against the counter, looking around at the apartment with new eyes. His gaze catches on the cinder block shelves: they don’t hold just clothes, as he’d previously assumed, but a couple of books as well. He’s relieved to find that they’re all in English. _The Man Behind the Legend: The Truth of Captain America, Heroes of World War II, Conspiracies of the Late 20th Century._

They don’t really seem promising, though. Steve realizes suddenly that darkness is falling fast—dusty winter darkness that smothers the earth. The apartment seems smaller without the light behind the windows. And Bucky still isn’t back, despite his promise. Going to the window, Steve sees a street below with cracked pavement and burnt-out street lamps, one strange-looking automobile parked on the far end of the block. There are no other lit windows.

After a few minutes’ anxious watching, Steve goes back to the books for something to do, but the door bangs open before he can crack the cover on any of them. He whips around, falling off-balance from his careful crouch, to see Bucky standing on the shabby landing. If he looks surprised to see Steve practically sitting in front of the door, he doesn’t show it. He quickly shuts the door again and slides the chain across to lock it. Then he drops his knapsack onto the table and hurries over to the window Steve had been watching from, looking out in a way that deliberately keeps him invisible from the outside.

It all happens in about four seconds. Steve recovers his balance and sees that in Bucky’s hand, held pointing at the floor, is the gun to which the dark, metallic glint this morning belonged. “Is there someone out there?” Steve asks.

Bucky lifts one hand from the grip and holds up a finger in Steve’s direction, not looking away from the window. His knuckles are scraped raw. An eternity passes before he finally turns away. “Not anymore,” he says. He tosses the gun onto the table and keeps leaning on the wall, holding himself strangely. “Why are you on the floor?”

“I thought—reading, maybe,” Steve says, gesturing. “You weren’t back, and I—” He stops, frowning. “You okay?”

Bucky snorts, as if the question is amusing somehow. “I’m functional,” he says.

“What does that m—” But Steve breaks off again, because Bucky has just winced and forced the zipper of his jacket down, revealing a dark patch on his undershirt that is suspicious and spreading. “What,” he sputters, “God—”

Showing no sign that he’s listening, or even that he’s concerned, Bucky pushes off the wall and stalks past Steve into the bathroom. Steve follows him and watches from the door frame as he tears his shirt open to reveal a lot more blood than was evident on the dark material. It’s coming mostly from his right shoulder. Bucky twitches the ruined shirt away from the wound bit by bit; his jaw clenches visibly.

“You gotta go to a hospital, Buck,” Steve says, his heart hammering in his chest so fast that he feels dizzy.

“Can’t,” Bucky replies tersely. “Don’t need to, anyways.” He motions with his head in the mirror for Steve to come closer. “Turn on the showerhead,” he says, “cold.”

Steve stays where he is. “You do need to,” he argues. “You’re bleeding a lot. Someone chase you here? What, did you get shot? That’s what people go to the hospital for!”

Again, Bucky barks out a single syllable of a laugh, the corner of his mouth lifting in a twisted grimace. “I’m not ‘people,’” he says. “And I’ve patched up lots worse than this. Bullet didn’t even go in. So turn on the shower before I have to do it with my teeth.”

Reluctantly, but alarmed at the iron in Bucky’s voice, Steve squeezes into the bathroom and turns the knob. “How do you—” he starts, but pauses when Bucky immediately sticks his shoulder under the water and dabs at the wound with the cleanest part of the shirt, none too gently.

“How do I what,” Bucky asks, leaning back, breathing a little harder than usual—but only a little.

“How do you know what to do?”

Bucky wads up the shirt and presses it down on his shoulder. As he does, he answers as if he’s doing nothing more taxing than clipping his nails. “It’s basic maintenance. Can’t have doctors everywhere.”

“So, in the army?”

There’s a second where Bucky looks—thoughtful, as if he’s not sure. Then he shakes his head. “Not there. Not field medicine. Just repair.” He flicks wet strands of hair out of his eyes. “To keep goin’.”

Steve can’t make sense of it. “Who taught you? When?” Not, he thinks, that he’s likely to recognize the names or dates.

“A few people,” Bucky says vaguely. “Between the first few missions. When they started on the more extensive stuff.”

He doesn’t give years. But, Steve thinks in a burst of strange and ironic clarity, watching the way Bucky watches drops of moisture trickle down the wall from the still-running shower, maybe he doesn’t know himself.

———

“So,” Steve says, “who shot you?”

Bucky rips the bandage, which is just half a ratty shirt, with his teeth. “Some kid,” he says. “They get younger each time, I swear.”

“You sound—”

“What?”

“Old,” Steve says, realizing it for the first time. He remembers his question from the night before.

“Guess that makes sense,” Bucky says, nodding just barely as his metal fingers tie a deft knot while he holds the other end with his chin. It comes undone, though, it must be from the moisture.

“Here,” Steve says, “let me.” He scoots his chair forward and reaches out to take the bandage. He notices belatedly that Bucky has gone still and watchful, but he goes ahead and ties the knot anyways. Only then does he glance away and see the scars on Bucky’s other shoulder, edging the metal arm like lace. His eyes go to Bucky’s.

Bucky stares back, pupils wide from adrenaline. Old eyes. Well over thirty, older than the rest of him. As if he’s lived every day of a hundred years and then some.

Steve looks away. “Give me your hand,” he says, “the right one, let me see.” He’s surprised when Bucky actually does it, maybe because he figures it’s not worth arguing about, maybe because the exhaustion is finally settling on him. Either way, Steve clicks his tongue over the bloodied knuckles and rips off another strip of the shirt, wetting it in water from the sink. “Thought I was the one who beat people up in alleys,” he says. “Or at least the one who needed bandaging after.”

“Wasn’t in an alley,” Bucky says immediately, and then, “I used to do this for you,” on the heels of the first sentence, like he can’t decide which one needs to be said more.

A smile pulls at Steve’s mouth despite everything. “Sure did.” He sets the pinkened cloth aside and dabs at Bucky’s knuckles with a drier bit. “I’m guessing you don’t want me to wrap up your hand?” Bucky makes a noise to the affirmative. “That’s it, then. And I didn’t put up half as much of a fuss as you always do.” He brushes a fleeting kiss to the back of Bucky’s hand.

He does it without thinking, the same way Bucky always did to him, easy as breathing. But Bucky flinches with his whole body and looks like he felt the kiss like an electric shock.

Steve tries to drop his hand, but now Bucky’s holding on tight. Almost to the point of pain. “Sorry,” Steve says belatedly, not sure what he did wrong.

Bucky shakes his head minutely. He won’t stop _staring._

“What is it?” Steve asks, every part of him wound so tight he aches.

Slowly, Bucky turns their hands over together. “Thought it was a dream,” he says softly. “Like the cooking.”

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

“The cooking,” Bucky repeats. “Your ma’s recipe. And that stew you always made. And—and once we fought, and I left, and I came back late and you’d left dinner out for me.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, though that wasn’t one time but many.

“It was cold,” Bucky continues, his voice gaining some steadiness. “But I ate it. And you came out of the bedroom...”

The scene appears in Steve’s head too, now, and he knows the one Bucky means. He sees it while Bucky keeps talking: the slow smile as it crested on Bucky’s lips, the tangle of their ankles beneath the table. Across from him in a future he doesn’t know, Bucky blinks at him and swallows thickly, and it comes to him that not so much has changed.

“You thought all that was a dream?” Steve asks, coming back to himself a little.

“Made more sense than it bein’ real,” Bucky replies in a near-whisper. He’s watching the table now. “Didn’t add up. That life. That way. With you,” he adds. “And I never read anythin’ about it, so I figured—” He makes a vague gesture at his own head.

“Bucky,” Steve says, slowly, carefully, screaming out for some coherency to all of this. “What happened?” _How did you get like this,_ he doesn’t ask.

But Bucky tells him anyways. “Zola made me,” he says. “I worked better that way. Took a while till I remembered.”

“What did you forget?” Steve breathes.

Bucky meets his eyes again. “Everything I could.”

———

They go to bed on top of the mattress on top of the time machine without discussing things further, and Steve knows it’s been just over twenty-four hours; just under forty-eight left. When he wakes up again, the streets outside are light and Bucky is gone. He tramps back in half an hour later, though, trailing snow and the smell of smoke.

“How’s your shoulder?” Steve asks, shivering in the draft of air from the door.

Bucky smiles, but it doesn’t go very deep. “Good as new.” When Steve snorts, Bucky pulls aside the collar of his shirt to show him. He’s not wearing the bandage—but Steve sees right away that he doesn’t need to. What was a raw and bloody wound is now barely more than a large, sore-looking scab. Bucky chuckles at the expression on Steve’s face. “I heal fast,” he says. “Maximum efficiency.”

“Let me guess,” Steve says, “this guy Zola did that, too?”

Bucky nods, looking less thrilled.

“I’m gonna get back to my own time and kill him dead,” Steve vows.

A frown creases Bucky’s brow. “Maybe you should shake his hand,” he points out. “He made me unkillable.”

Steve scoffs. “I’m not sure the ends justify the means in this case.” He takes in Bucky’s residual paleness, the always-wary set of his jaw. “So who shot you?” he asks.

“Told you. A—”

“—a kid, yeah right. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

Unexpectedly, Bucky gives him a wry smile. “It _was_ a kid. You don’t wanna know any more than that.”

“No,” Steve says, “I really do.”

“Well, I don’t wanna tell you.”

“Why the hell not?” Steve demands. “I’m stuck here with you for two more days, whoever it is could come busting in here and shoot me too, and I’m a lot easier to take down than you are.”

“The less you know, the better,” Bucky insists, pulling a jar of plum jam from his knapsack and following it up with a loaf of dark bread.

“I have a right to know—”

“Yeah,” Bucky says with his palms flat on the table, “you do. But if I tell you, it won’t matter that you’ve got to stay in the apartment. You’ll run out and try to do it yourself, I know you will—no, don’t give me that shit, it may all be scrambled eggs up here but I have fuckin’ _muscle memory_ of haulin’ you out of fights.” He blinks and takes a breath, and when he keeps talking, his tone is more measured, his accent evened to a nondescript clip. “And I don’t want that, Stevie. I don’t know much, but I got that one down.”

It’s such a shift, so surprising and clearly sincere—as if Bucky is ever anything but—that Steve has to grasp for words for a moment. “I just wanna help,” he says finally, feeling almost defeated. “I know you’re in trouble, Buck, even if you’re not gonna say it. I don’t know how _not_ to help, even if you don’t want me to try.”

In Bucky’s eyes, Steve sees the beginning of the irritation from the night he arrived. “It’s not that I don’t want you to,” he says haltingly. “There’s just nothing you can do.”

Steve sets his jaw. “Where am I?” he demands, crossing his arms.

Bucky frowns. “What? I told you, Bucha—”

“I mean the now-me,” Steve says, “whatever, the one who lived all the in-between time. I saw some pictures in there,” he says—and he knows he shouldn’t sound this accusatory, if anything he should be apologetic for snooping, but he’s so goddamn confused—“but I’m guessin’ I’ve probably kicked it by now.”

This earns Steve the first honest show of disarmed shock he’s seen since he got here. “Why the hell would you think that?” Bucky demands, obviously surprised but also—maybe—defensive. There’s no hint of anger that Steve went through his things.

“‘Cause if I were alive, you wouldn’t be living like this,” Steve says. He waves a hand at the apartment. “It’s yours, okay, fine, but you got shot yesterday and—”

“—and I handled it.”

“—and you’re tossing and turning in your sleep,” Steve says as if there was no interruption, “and whenever I get too close to you it’s like I stabbed you.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “If I were alive, I’d—I don’t know. I’d have done something about it.”

“You’re alive,” Bucky says, “don’t be ridiculous. And maybe the reason you haven’t done anything about it is because I don’t want you to.”

“Don’t _you_ be ridiculous,” Steve parrots back at him. “I thought I was supposed to be the stubborn one. You can’t live like this, Buck.”

Bucky comes around the table. He doesn’t come any closer than that, but in the too-small apartment they’re only a few feet apart, and Steve is aware just how enormous Bucky is—how powerful, even with hollows in his cheeks and a strange list to his body. “You missed seventy-five years,” Bucky tells him, the anger rolling off in palpable waves. “You don’t know what I—you don’t know.”

“Then tell me,” Steve says helplessly.

“I _can’t.”_ And it’s not anger, it’s fear and pain, it has been the whole time—Steve sees it now—a wounded animal backed into a corner. With a noise that could almost be a growl, but resembles more closely a whimper, Bucky turns around and stalks back out the way he came.

———

Half-asleep, Steve assumes Bucky’s snoring at first, despite the way he’s turned silent and still; even his breathing is quiet now. It takes a second till he realizes Bucky is twitching around on the mattress in small, controlled thrashes, shifting it ever so slightly across the floor. And the noise he’s making—

“Bucky,” Steve rasps, trying ineffectually to pin down the metal arm before it punches him. “Hey, Buck, wake up, come on—” He can tell the instant when Bucky is awake because he goes still under Steve’s hands, his breath coming in uneven bursts but otherwise absolutely motionless. “Nightmare?” Steve asks, sitting back.

Bucky’s right hand curls loosely around his wrist. His skin is warm. “I don’t know,” he breathes.

He’s crying, Steve hears, crying and trying not to, and the sound rends Steve to the core. “It wasn’t real,” he says, hoping it wasn’t; “you’re okay—” which is simply a lie. Steve lies down next to him again, takes him in his arms as well as he can.

Against his shoulder, Bucky says something so choked that it takes Steve a moment to understand it. _It was real._ His fingers knotted in Steve’s shirt are clenched so tight that they don’t tremble with the rest of him.

“What is it?” Steve asks, trying not to press but at a loss for how to help. “What was real?”

“I didn’t kill him,” Bucky gasps. “I didn’t—he shot me, but I didn’t—” He shakes his head convulsively. “They wanted me to, I should’ve—and he was one of ‘em—and I didn’t do it, I chose not to, but it—and he—”

“Shh,” Steve says, alarmed. He’s not sure how much of this is gibberish and how much he just doesn’t have the context for, but he hates the desperation in Bucky’s voice, like he’s trying to prove something. “You’re—it’s gonna be okay.”

If he knows it’s meaningless, Bucky doesn’t seem to care; he clutches tighter. His breathing slows a little. “It was just one kid,” he says softly, almost to himself. “They weren’t supposed to find me here.”

The page from the notebook flashes into Steve’s mind. “You’re running from someone.”

“Not anymore,” Bucky says. He disentangles himself from Steve slowly, like his limbs are made of lead. Sits up. “Trying to—start over.” His shoulders shake, from shivering or suppressed sobs, Steve doesn’t know. “They fucked me up. I don’t wanna be like that anymore. But they keep following.”

The confusion, the uncertainty—the fear—is eating Steve alive, but he forces it down. “You got away,” he says, “you’re safe, they’re not here”—though he doesn’t know who _they_ are, exactly—“they won’t find you.”

“But,” Bucky says, airless, “but maybe they should.” He turns to Steve, his face like a skull in the darkness. “I did things, Stevie. Bad enough, you’d want to kill me if you knew.” Over Steve’s protest, he shakes his head. “You already tried a few times.” He swallows. “All those years, no one was there. You missed a lot of time. I don’t—I can’t tell what I turned into, but it’s nothin’ good.” Again, his expression twists, his voice constricts. “Someone’s gotta take me out, Steve, or I’m afraid I’ll—I can’t do it anymore, I _won’t—”_

Steve gives up on speaking and just holds him. He doesn’t know what else to do. And this, at least, he’s familiar with—Bucky’s body pressed against his, close, nothing in between. Even if he no longer feels like they’re living in one skin, like their breath comes and goes out of the same lungs, he can do this. He presses his lips to the skin on Bucky’s shoulder, completely smooth now, as if the wound were never there.

Bucky shudders beneath his touch, turns his head, his hands tentative. “I keep remembering,” he murmurs. “It didn’t make sense before.”

His breath ghosts over Steve’s skin, and Steve pulls him closer, and closer still when he doesn’t pull away. He runs his fingers along Bucky’s right arm, feels the flesh and bone of him, still the same under the years. “What do you remember?” he asks. His heart hurts in a way it never has before.

Instead of answering, Bucky kisses him. It’s not the kiss Steve knows from their creaking bed and well-trod living room, with brass band in the background and tasting faintly of smoke—but it’s the same, the way Bucky tilts his head, the gentle fingers on Steve’s jaw, the softness of his mouth.

Bucky breaks away with the barest of sighs, leans his forehead against Steve’s. “It keeps coming back to me,” he whispers. “Like something I knew all along.”

———

“Gotta go out sometime,” Bucky murmurs with a voice rough from sleep.

Steve shakes his head against Bucky’s shoulder. “Only a few hours left,” he says. It’s barely true—there are almost twelve hours left to them—but he has an irrational fear that if Bucky walks out the door he’ll vanish into thin air, or be shot again, and—he twists so they lie more closely nested together.

He feels it when Bucky clears his throat. “We’re out of plums,” he says softly.

“You can buy plums when I’m gone,” Steve tells him, reaching up, brushing the hair from his forehead. In the strengthening morning he feels brave. “Let’s stay here.”

“In the bed?” That old indignation, familiar as a scar.

“Or wherever. Just—here.” He presses his hand to Bucky’s, pretends it’s strong enough to stop the sun from marching.

———

Steve rolls over and fetches up against Bucky, who shifts to accommodate him, and opens his eyes again. It’s getting late; he can tell from the light and the quiet. About half an hour left if the shadows are anything to go by. And it surprises him that Bucky is still next to him. He doesn’t turn around to look, but watches the dust motes as the sun steals up the wall opposite the mattress. “Are you happy?” he asks. “Here?”

He hears the slow sound of Bucky sighing through his nose. Like he’s actually considering it. “It’s nicer here than it was anywhere else,” he says finally. “Even with—you know, all of it—it’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad,” Steve repeats. He doesn’t feel indignant like he did before, just sad, a bit bewildered at how this place came to be “nice.” “Where were you before?”

To his surprise, Bucky tells him. “Hungary. I slept under a bridge.”

“Turkey before that?”

Bucky sighs again. “You read my book, huh?”

“Well, you wouldn’t tell me anything and—”

“I don’t care,” Bucky says, a little scornfully. “I—I guess it’s good that you know,” he allows, “I mean, I don’t know which way’s up anymore so I’d never be able to get the words out.” He shifts his weight and the mattress slides on the floor. The ticking of the machine grows infinitesimally louder. “In Turkey you almost got me killed.”

Now Steve does turn. “I’m not gonna do that,” he says. “When I get back, I’m gonna—I’ll know, I won’t hurt you.”

Bucky is gazing at the ceiling, his face still in shadow. A smile flickers over his mouth. “You still gonna be a pain in my ass?”

It’s the way he says it, soft but not really hopeful. Steve blinks to clear his eyes. “I don’t know how to be anything else,” he admits.

At that, Bucky chuckles. He turns his head to look Steve in the face. “You’re gonna do it all the same,” he says. “You shot me, I think four times, and you’ll do it again, and you’re gonna fuck it up in Turkey again, too.”

“Not if I _know—”_

Bucky shakes his head. “But you’re not gonna know. This thing”—he taps the lump of the mattress between them, where the ticking is loudest—“it’s gonna make you forget.”

Steve squints. “How could it do that?”

“Electricity.” Bucky’s expression betrays something like disgust. “That Stark bastard knew what he was doing, credit where it’s due, but—I recognized it when I saw it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Bucky gestures to his own head. “That’s how they made me forget. Same technology. Used it on you, too, with—”

“—Erskine’s serum,” Steve argues quickly, “that’s not Stark’s, that’s—” But he stops. “It’s Stark’s machine,” he realizes. “You mean people are gonna use that to—?”

He looks up, enraged, but Bucky is smiling sadly at him. “Can’t change the past, Stevie.”

His skin crawling, Steve recoils. “Fuck you, I can’t.” He bolts upright and the horror propels him to his feet and halfway across the room. “I’m—I don’t accept that, I can’t, it’s—”

Bucky catches him by the arm before he can go farther. “Even if you remembered when you went back,” he says, “there’s nothin’ you could do to stop it.”

“And you want me to just—be all right with that?”

“You don’t have a choice,” Bucky says, but it’s not cruel. “Neither do I. It’s like you weren’t even here.”

Steve stares. His eyes burn. “Then—then what was the point?” he asks. By some miracle, his voice stays steady. “Why’m I even here?” Bucky’s fingers are warm and rough. “You were right,” he says, bitter and sore in his throat. “I shouldn’t’ve done it.”

The grip on his arm turns painful. “You believe that and you’re as big an idiot as I am,” Bucky says. Looking up in surprise, Steve sees that Bucky looks as angry as he is. “You never listen to me. Another thing I can’t get out of my head. And here you are, swallowin’ the dumbest thing I ever said.”

“But I can’t fix anything,” Steve says, blind and losing his grip on the truth, on his composure. “I can’t make it right.”

“It is right,” Bucky presses. “All of it, everything they’re gonna do to us—it’s fine.”

“How can you say that?” Steve chokes. “You lived it.”

“And I made it here,” Bucky says, his voice abruptly soft again. It matches his eyes. And what Steve thought was anger—it looks more like—well, Steve can’t say. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt anything that big. “You’re savin’ me, you know that?”

Steve doesn’t know himself what he planned on saying in reply, but it’s drowned out by a loud beep from the mattress that has Bucky flinching like it’s a grenade. He retrieves the machine, not damaged from three days of being crushed beneath two bodies. They both gaze down at the numbers scrolling by.

00:03:55, 00:03:54...

“Almost wish I could stay,” Steve mumbles. “Don’t want you to be alone.”

Bucky laughs. “Don’t worry about that,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll catch up one of these days.”

Steve drops his hand to Bucky’s, holds it tight. Metal in both hands. “What do you mean, I’m saving you?”

“You,” Bucky starts, “you—bug the hell out of me, if you wanna know,” and he laughs again, like he can’t quite believe it. “You never fuckin’ leave.”

“Well, I’m goin’,” Steve reminds him as the clock ticks past 00:02:26. “So it’s a good day for—”

“And I don’t know what I’d do if you did,” Bucky finishes. “Stevie, look at me.”

Confused, Steve does.

Bucky closes his eyes briefly. “God, you make me wanna run,” he says. “You scare me. I don’t think that’s new. And I’m no more a match for it now than I was then, whenever. Yellow-bellied, you know?”

“You’re not a coward,” Steve argues.

“For you, no,” Bucky agrees, and his right hand cradles Steve’s wrist. “When you found me—Stevie, I was runnin’. From everything in me, I just wanted to leave—cut out the mess, however I had to.”

On impulse, Steve kisses him, desperate and aching and sure he’s about to break in two. Out of all the kisses he can remember, from the last night and day and from all the years they’ve shared, he has never tried to say quite this much in one moment. Something about trust. Something about eternity.

Bucky pulls back, and they glance down as one. 00:00:16. “But I can’t cut it out,” he murmurs, “’cause it’s you. No matter where,” he says, kissing him again, “no matter when.”

Steve wraps his arms around Bucky, reaches as wide as he can, presses to him. Water to the earth, earth to the stone. He can feel the machine growing hot in his palm, feel its frantic thudding pulse and his own and Bucky’s, and he closes his eyes, and the warmth against his skin is there, is solid, is real—

———

 _German Special Forces, approaching—_ Steve’s spine tingles, a feeling different from the one he’s had since he walked into this apartment, different even from the one he had when he saw his old face staring up from the notebook in his hands. _—from the south._ But it, too, feels familiar.

And then he places it: a rifle sight on his back, disarmed. “Understood,” he tells Sam, and lifts his chin. Hope expands barrel-like in his chest, his heart beating a frantic waterfall against his ribs. He hadn’t pictured Bucky in Bucharest, or in Turkey or any of the places he’d nearly caught up—if anything, he’d envisioned him captured again, screaming or gone still and silent, either way a nightmare. This, he thinks—it’s not what he’d imagined, a sunny, dirty, tiny room, rumpled mattress on the floor, cinder block bookshelves propped up on the wall. The smell of plums. Not what he expected. But all right, he thinks, and somehow almost comforting, a lived-in place, one that he finds his feet rest comfortably in. How could it be anything else, when he knows who waits behind him? He turns.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love! <3


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